A few of their rules particularly stood out as relevant to data stories:

#2 You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.

#11 Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.

#17 No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.

I’m sure there are others that could apply, but those are the 3 that really struck me. Sometimes I find fun and funky data that no one else is interested in. I’m always having to refocus on the question at hand. When you analyze data a lot, the “normal stuff” can get boring, but normal is interesting to someone who’s seeing it for the first time. That bleeds in to #11….you can’t always know what’s interesting to people until you start to share it. Testing reactions and assessing opinion is valuable.

When something flops, that’s when #17 comes in. I store all the data I come across for future use. It’s interesting how often something no one was interested in can later become critical.